The Beast Machines toy line was rather poor at best and only had a small handful of decent figures. Black Arachnia was one of the decent figures but even she didn't escape a few serious character flaws.

Firstly the characters paint scheme is not show accurate, this was only corrected a few years later by Takara when they released the Beast Machines series in Japan under the renamed title of "Beast Wars Returns". Hasbro/Mainframe chose to repaint Black Arachnia in a more purple-ish type color scheme rather than her cartoon show pink-ish style color scheme. The new colors work rather well on Black Arachnia and you don't really notice that the colors are not show accurate since most of the time during Beast Machines the characters are shown in dark environments.

The "Spider-Mode" looks fantastic and is about as close as you could have expected the figure to look considering it also needs to transform into robot mode as well. The legs for the Spider separate in robot mode and the robot legs become 4 Spider legs while the arms become the front legs of the Spider. The back section of the Spider also hides the main body and head of the robot mode. The back section has pieces of clear yellow type plastic and if you look close enough you can see the Maximal logo imprinted inside.

Robot mode is were the figure faces its first few flaws as the main problem with the figure is the legs/feet. It appears that Hasbro/Mainframe chose to release the figure with the option of added 'Clown Feet' because unless you bend the feet out flat then the figure just falls down all the time. In the Cartoon show we see Black Arachnia walking around on what can only be described as her 'tip toes' and while the Beast mode can do this it seems that the robot mode cannot. This is a very sad situation as this really ruins a fantastic figure from the Beast Machines line, whets even worse however is that Unicron.com sells small clear plastic stands for Beast Machines Black Arachnia which make her able to pose on her toes like how she was meant to be. It is a sad situation because the stands that Unicron.com sell hardly cost a thing and why Hasbro/Mainframe and even Takara never chose to make these themselves to make the figure perfect is just bizarre and rather sad as it makes a great figure in a poor toy line just seem ignored and not cared about.

Black Arachnia has a very show accurate body aside from the leg issue. Her face looks perfect and she has her black hair and even her several Spider eyes feature. The legs and arms are extremely poseable and you can pretty much put Black Arachnia in any pose your heart desires. The waist rotates as does the neck area and so do the elbow sections and even the knee sections. The front section of the Spider is the very back section of the robot mode, the claws hide in the background on the front of the Spider which basically make the figure look more complete and show accurate.

The packaging for Beast Machines Black Arachnia was nothing special and she basically just came in the same old "Basic" design packaging that all basic Beast Machine figures had. She came carded with the logo on the front and the back of the card had her Bio with Stats and also a few other figures available in the Beast Machines line such as Rev, Scavenger, Tank Drone and others.

A great figure in a poor toy line but if you liked Beast Machines and are a fan of Black Arachnia then she is definitely worth picking up. If you cant find the Beast Machines version of the figure she has also been repainted twice in the "Universe" line as Universe Crystal Widow and Universe Black Arachnia (hardly much of a difference in paint schemes however) so if your a Beast Machines/Fembot/Black Arachnia fan then this mould is certainly for you.